Game Engine

This is a discussion on Game Engine within the Game Programming forums, part of the General Programming Boards category; Hi, if i was to create a Online Trading Card Game, where people can win new cards, and use them ...

I wholeheartedly agree. And while re-inventing the wheel is not a good thing, in this case it is.

And the only reason companies do this is for security's sake. They know if they roll their own engine it will eat loads of dev time and money. But you can be sure they know how to roll their own, it's just not economically feasible to do it.

As for a card game engine, I'm not sure that would even be that difficult. Try some code on your own and see what you come up with.

They know if they roll their own engine it will eat loads of dev time and money. But you can be sure they know how to roll their own, it's just not economically feasible to do it.

Sure it is. All they'd have to do is whip together one engine and get lucky. Also helps to have some products selling on the side. Look at Epic Megagames and Cyan Worlds as good examples of this. Both engines were developed at the same time games were selling.

I'm referring to the realtime engine that powered the last three Myst games (RealMyst, Uru, and Myst 5). Screenshots can be found on Myst5.com.

Cyan Worlds might not totally qualify though because originally the engine wasn't theirs. They bought out a company that had an interesting engine, used it for RealMyst, and then proceeded to rewrite it almost completely, if not entirely, from scratch.

i spoke to the owner of a previous huge selling trading card game, and he said it required so much maths. and thats how u do the cards and stuff. i have a hell of a lot to learn before i could do it but i hope ill get there one day.

would it be extremely hard to make it able to trade your cads with other people?

and what does it need to have a database so people can Regster and it saves them straight into the database so they can log in and out when they want. but can only go online in the game when logged in?

Any game needs a game engine. Perhaps the term has not been applied to other types of software, but one could say an accounting software needs an accounting engine too. The term "game engine" is loosely used to signify all the core components of the software that deal with... the core parts of the game. AI, scripting, rendering, 3D graphics, physics, game rules, etc...

So yes, you need a game engine. In fact you will build one whether you want it or not. Some components can be dealt with the help of libraries. Most notably graphics, rendering and physics are dealt with by many libraries (some of them erroneously called game engines) that ease your development of the game. However, your use of these libraries doesn't exclude the fact you will have to program and thus build your own game engine for your own specific game. Other components have to be built from scratch, like your game AI (if there is any) and the game rules.